Imagine this. You are opening a new restaurant and as a start up you need people to try out your food and leave hopefully good reviews to attract more people. So, on your grand opening day, you sent out an invitation to friends and family members to dine out at your restaurant. However, in this case you are expecting everyone to be treated as a regular customer with no discounts or anything. Some people treat this as an insult per se and don’t attend whereas others view it as a great way to support someone they know. So you have to wonder, if you are specifically inviting people in this manner should you pay the bill similar to when you invite people to attend a party?
In some ways I would be inclined to say yes if you are specifically inviting as your guest. In this context too, I would think it can be an initial test to make your business is actually ready for the general public as the people you know are more likely to be understanding if there are mishaps during your launch. Otherwise in many ways it can feel like one is simply using people as a mailing list of sort to hopefully sell items.
You have to be careful on that as many times this can result in people simply ignoring you in the future as they know you just simply want something from them to the point where one won’t bother to maintain the business relationship.